The Voynich Ninja

Whenever I look at the nitty-gritty of Voynichese text, I can't help but feel like some glyphs should be (positional) variants of each other.

* final glyphs have a flourish: Eva- s, n
* In a series of i-minims, the last one looks like EVA-n
* In a series of c-shapes, the last one looks like EVA-s
* EVA-q could be the preferred shape of EVA-y before o

There are also other things, like if you have a series of minims that is not preceded by [o], the first one looks like EVA-a. And I'm sure there's much more like this.
I'm also sure all of this has been remarked many times before. What I don't understand is that some of these features (like [n] being just another minim) have not been adopted as the default approach yet...

This plays a significant role my new word model (still under work). This appeared to some extent in my music presentation, and the related paper.

The problem is that we cannot be sure of anything. Just consider, and see where it leads us.

Hmm yes, the lack of certainty may be the main problem. It's the same as how to treat benched gallows. Similar stacked glyphs are found in Greek writings, in which case they have to be "unstacked" to read them. But they might as well be unique whole characters.

If I recall correctly, one reason some people are averse to the thought of positional variation is that it reduces the number of available glyphs to something well below what an alphabet would need. But if the thought of a substitution alphabet is abandoned, this should no longer be an issue.

It is easy to show that the MS is certainly not any straightforward substitution.
If there is any substitution from a plain text involved, the best candidate is a verbose substitution.
This means that one PT character is represented as a (short) string of Voynich glyphs.
For that to work, we need (as one option) a small set of Voynich characters.

So, indeed, I do not see that as an issue at all.
Of course, all this is hypothesis, to be confirmed by some tangible result.

Although the best default approach should probably be to consider each distinct variation as its own glyph and not make too many assumptions about a system we cannot read, I too am toying with the idea of some glyphs being positional variants.
I'm not so sure about the other flourishes, but I personally feel that n (EVA-n) may just be a word-final variant of i (EVA-i). I myself am not savvy on paleography, but I'm sure I have seen some other few manuscripts having n as a mere "final" i minim with a flourish. Please, feel free to correct me on this.

Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let's say we cannot know for sure n is just another way of writing a final i.
As far as I can tell, unlike r or s, the relatively few times n is followed by another character, it tends to either occur on "LAAFU" line positions (i.e. beginning/ending of lines, or cramped beside the edge of a drawing), other times within anomalously long words, sequences with ambiguous whitespaces, or in Labelese. We do see some words starting with 'flourished' glyphs such as y, r and s, but not once one that starts with n.

Also, there are almost no words ending in i in the entirety of the manuscript, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

It is also worth noting that in f27v:
    n is completely missing in the entirety of f27v
    i seems to be also missing, except for a couple of glyphs that I read as awkwardly written e, dcar and daidy

I get the feeling that other "flourished" variations behave differently, and that there may be something different going on with them.
For instance, take the glyphs generated from e and i according to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. r and s share the same flourish, and both occur fairly often in the MS. Same goes for y and l, but the respective "counterpart" to n (b, EVA-b) - which occurs not nearly as often as n - always occurs in similar word positions as n, and often preceded by a sequence of e "minims" (just like n is often preceded by i). See folios f29v, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for a couple of these occurrences.

I know for certain long time users of this forum already know Emma May Smith has previously delved in a similar topic on her hypothesis of a and y equivalence, but I'll leave it here just in case: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

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Going off on a tangent here, but...
IF there is meaningful, underlying plaintext encoded in f27v, the absence of n in such a rather long-running string of text suggests to me that there is redundancy in the coding, and n, in, iin, iiin sequences can somehow be replaced.

Also, even though nearly no words end in i, with scribe(s) apparently preferring n as a finishing i variant, we do observe many words ending in e and the absence of b in many of the VMS quires, which marks a noticeable contrast between two seemingly similar variants of flourished minims.

[attachment=9158]

When I look at page f27v, the writer looks very insecure to me. The text and the characters do not seem to be constant. I would even categorise this as scribe (xxx).
When I read books, I often notice that endings are shortened but also written out. ( Titus - Tit9 / Glarus-Glar9 ) by the same person.
It is possible that on page 27v the endings were written out.
But it is also possible that iii stands for the tenses. ( future, present and past ). Here the form would change simply because of the amount of (ii-iii-iiii).
Finally, the variants of the characters. In my opinion, the most important decision maker is the arc ‘)’.

RadioFM: 

When considering exceptions like [i] at the end of words, I personally feel like these can safely be ignored. There is almost always something weird going on (like obstruction by a plant drawing) and their occurrence is three orders of magnitude smaller than that of [in]. 

For me, the biggest problem with [n] being the final form of [i] is the existence of [ir]. One option is just that the agreement was "you flourish your final minim". Something like this was done in accounting with Roman numerals, where the final I was written like J. In that case, the scribe might sometimes use the other flourish, without a change in interpretation. 

If it is indeed the case that [ir] is equivalent to [in] since it doesn't matter which flourish they use, then we should expect a difference between scribes. In Herbal A, [in]/[ir] = 6%, while in Herbal B with a different scribe, [in]/[ir] = 22%. 

There is also the phenomenon that some glyphs could easily be merged without much loss of information. Like you say, [y] and [a] is an option, but for example also [y] and [q]. If the rule is "[y] before [o] becomes the ligature [qo]", then they are following this quite well. Voynichese.com gives 5289 for [qo] and only 40 for [yo] (which includes weird examples like the one below).

[attachment=9159]

Quote:Finally, the variants of the characters. In my opinion, the most important decision maker is the arc ‘)’.

Yes, it is possible the flourishes carry meaning.

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Quote:For me, the biggest problem with [n] being the final form of [i] is the existence of [ir]

Although the ir, iir and iiir endings could turn out to be somehow "equivalent" to their iiin counterparts, I feel they may be subject to different writing constraints. Specifically, we have a few instances of ir sequences occurring not at the end of word, but right before a iin sequence, with words such as dairin, ariin. Here are the few examples, in a dirty You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Now, to be completely fair, the instances where this occurs are so few that of course, they may not even be worth considering in the grand scheme of the MS, and the fact that they occur in "LAAFU" line positions or consecutive folios, suggests they may be just exceptions found at the crossroads of different encoding mechanisms, or a coding quirk that was quickly dropped by the scribe(s).

But the fact that in the MS we have a bunch of matches for ri, the ones in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. even repeated in the same folio (so as to probably not be an isolated typo in that case), while at the same time having apparently no occurrence of ni whatsoever in the whole MS (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), gives me the impression that there are at least different syntactic rules governing these different flourishes - maybe as small as the convention of "adding a whitespace / breaking the word whenever i is flourished as n instead of r ".

It's also worth pointing out that although very few in number, these ri matches are not unique to just one, but three different Lisa Fagin Davis' (LFD) Hands (hands 1, 2 and 3 per You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) - potentially implying that even in the face of having to write such a weird/rare word, these hands all agree that r, unlike n, can be followed by i .

Quote:There is also the phenomenon that some glyphs could easily be merged without much loss of information. Like you say, [y] and [a] is an option, but for example also [y] and [q].

Yes, that's actually an interesting idea. I guess in theory a verbose cipher could, for example, map a single letter 'a' to a combination of letter + whitespace + letter, such as " y q ", giving the false impression of a word break. By the way, does anybody happen to know of any previous research on possible "y q" substitutions, maybe trying to see if it fits the distribution of any letter or symbol in some of the candidate European languages?

Something very weird is going on with [ri]. Voynichese.com gives 18 examples, so it is extremely rare. As you point out, it is found with several scribes, but... One third of all examples is concentrated on folios 49-50. One on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , two on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and three on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . But f50 is Currier B and f49 is Currier A. Moreover, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has one of those columns of characters in the left margin, much like f66r, which is part of the very confused Quire 8...

Edit: I meant ri, not ni. I shall go hide behind a shrubbery.

I'm not any kind of expert on Voynich Manuscript but for me so called "n" also looks like a final "i".
You guys don't care to educate the beginners so let me try to do it



In medieval manuscripts when Roman numerals were written , the final "I" for one was often written in a different way than earlier Is. It looked more similar to modern "j" letter:
Here is a part of a list of popes which their reigning times, I marked the numbers with last I being different:

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There was some very practical reason about it - nobody could falsify your numbers but adding some extra "I" here and there. With that "j" sign you were sure where they end.

And we have serious reasons to believe that Voynich letters behave similarly to numbers or, to make a stronger claim, they are some mutated numbers.
But I agree that at this moment it's just a hypothesis.